


I'm Getting Sick Of Christmas, I'm Already Sick Of You

by lindsey_grissom



Series: Downton At Christmas [4]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, always a good mix that, christmas and new feuds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 04:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21173687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: It’s Christmas, and Miss O’Brien contemplates the beginning of the end as she plots to bring Thomas Barrow down.





	I'm Getting Sick Of Christmas, I'm Already Sick Of You

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt: For imestizaa who asked for: Thomas and Miss O'Brien. And the song **It's Christmas (And I Hate You).**

She'd forgotten what it felt like; to hate someone like this, to want to ruin everything, to tear them apart. Not since the soap, _that_ bathtub, a little with Bates, {that _murderer_}.

She's felt smothered, stifled. Tried to keep to herself, has worked and slept and kept an ear open but nothing has come up, nothing to get her teeth into and rip apart.

Until Thomas turned on her, showed Alfred up; her nephew who should be off limits, family is always off limits.

And now she hates him, knows him so well that bringing him down will be a pleasure, will scratch that itch she's been having and then some.

How dare he make Alfred look so bad, then think they're still friends, still partners in this godforsaken house.

Him with his twisted morals, his better-than-you sneer, his scar of bravery that she knows, she _knows_ he gave himself.

He struts the corridors like he's something great, like he isn't a coward, a sinner, a thief. As though he is so confident that she will hold her tongue he thinks he can do as he pleases.

And now it's Christmas, and she has a black leather glove she does not want to give him, but then who else would have need of it; one single glove alone?

He doesn't deserve it. No matter that they were once friends, there's no going back from where they are now. Only forward, and she has a plan, has seen the interest he gives Jimmy, and why not bring him down with that, bring them both down perhaps and then Alfred will be top with no one left to best him? Who will stop her after all? He's as ill-liked as she is.

Still, she has the glove and she'll be damned if she lets her hard-earned money go completely to waste, even if that means he gets it, even if it means she does something _nice_ for him.

She wraps it quickly in brown paper and string, leaves it beneath the tree is Mrs Hughes' sitting room where all the other servants' gifts will wait until Christmas morning. Nothing special, not this year. This year they won't sit outside with cigarettes and wine, toast to each other, to a future that has to be better than the present.

No, he will receive it with the others and perhaps, _maybe_ he will think himself forgiven, that she is content again to resume their friendship, after all her plan is far more likely to succeed if he trusts her as much as he ever has.

* * *

She finds on Christmas day a gift on her seat at the breakfast table, carefully wrapped in green paper, her name in his hand on the tag.

{A silver lighter, engraved with her initials.}

She is, in that moment, a little sorry; that it has come to this, that it could end so quickly. And she misses him, thinks for a second, not even that, that he can be forgiven.

But family is off limits and he knows there are no second chances. Not even at Christmas.


End file.
